Beholding the Beauty

I received a list of excellent questions from an Anonymous commenter on my last post, summarized by the first one: "How does non-intervention work in the real world?"  There are several followup questions, so I'll answer them here. You write: "If we maintain a standing army, we keep it at home to secure our own borders" So there is some discussion amongst non-interventionists as to whether or not the U.S. would keep a standing army?  This is more a dispute between Libertarians in general.  Most non-interventionists (including myself) would not go as far as to completely disband the military.  However, we would significantly reduce it's size when not in times of declared war.  The details of the reduction (which branches get cut the most, what we do with the hardware in the meanwhile, how we keep people trained in it, etc.) would be up for serious discussion. Would I be correct in assuming that “standing army” is a metaphor for all branches of the

Those conservatives who oppose Ron Paul's bid for presidency tend to do so because of his foreign policy.  The word "isolationism" is bandied about rather loosely.  To borrow a phrase from Inigo Montoya, "I do not think that word means what you think it means." The detractors accuse Mr. Paul of wanting to isolate the United States, to stop having anything to do with the rest of the world, to withdraw our entire world presence to within our borders, and "go dark", supporting ourselves and our way of life, and the rest of the world be damned.  That is isolationism. There is another concept, which actually comprises Mr. Paul's (and my) actual stance: Non-Intervention. What is Non-Intervention?  It is maintaining trade and diplomatic relations with the world, to further our national interests, while remaining free of entangling alliances and military action, as much as possible.  If we maintain a standing army, we keep it at home to secure our ow